


Nine truths

by Oh_golly_ice_lolly



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Background Character Death, Breezepelt being Breezepelt, Gangs, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Minor Violence, My man Crowfeather is dead, Swearing, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27895648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oh_golly_ice_lolly/pseuds/Oh_golly_ice_lolly
Summary: Nine truths about Breeze (and one lie.)Human au
Relationships: Breezepelt & Jayfeather (Warriors), Kinda - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Nine truths

**Author's Note:**

> The aftermath of Crow’s death. Breeze POV. 
> 
> I was trying to make it into a comfort fic between the four crowfeather kids but it... didn’t turn out that way.
> 
> Warning: there is swearing and unhealthy coping mechanisms. (And a little bit of violence too.)
> 
> Names:  
> Breeze- Breezepelt  
> Jay- Jayfeather  
> Leon- Lionblaze  
> Holly- Hollyleaf  
> Crow- Crowfeather  
> Night- Nightcloud  
> Leah- Leafpool  
> Tyler- Tigerstar  
> Hare- Harespring  
> Heather- Heathertail  
> Bram- Bramblestar  
> Squirrel- Squirrelflight  
> Ivy- Ivypool

1  
His bloody cuts have always healed quicker than normal. 

Fights upon fights are routine, he can no longer feel the sting of his knuckles nor the chatter of his teeth. He will crawl out his bedroom window- careful not to wake his mother. His mother who can no longer sleep but instead curses madly to herself, clutching pictures of a dead man. 

Breeze will make his way to the ring where he will laugh and jeer and spit like all hell. He always comes home before milky daylight. Bandages his ribs and takes more pills than he probably should. It’s fine. 

He likes the pain. A dull thrumming in his ears. He can finally feel something. Something that isn’t the icy chasms of his lungs or the ache in his chest. 

2  
He’s always loved English although he is not good at it.  


Average at best (that’s all he’ll ever be). He can read poems and laugh, he can finger books and cry- but this does not make his writing any better.

Words spiral on the page, empty things with no meaning. He tries his best, squints and furrows his brow. He still can’t find the secret messages his classmates seem to chant like cultists. 

Breeze instead excels in maths, in the sciences. He hates it. Rigid, straightforward, easy. Why do the numbers appear so clear in his mind and the spiel of Steinbeck spiral round like angry bees. 

Perhaps things with meaning allude him. 

3  
He hates his fucking job. 

Sitting in a chair all day, pressing random buttons on a till. He doesn’t bother straightening the notes nor admiring the pictures on the coins. He crinkles them like ugly blooming flowers, this money. This money. An addictive disease. 

It wraps itself around souls like a serpent. Tightens, and suffocates. Never enough of it. 

Humans are always wanting more, more, more.

His coworkers are no different. Stupid and chatty. Kids with nothing better to do. Kids who need to earn money to eat. 

Breeze is neither of these. He’s just greedy. 

4  
Heather is too good for him. 

The prettiest girl in school. Big blue eyes, mousy brown hair. She laughs like bells and shines like supernovas. He is nothing but a plain meteorite. 

He thinks he will destroy the earth one day. Blow it up. Bam. Eff society and all that.

His mind is corrupted now by stupid edgy teens on the internet. 

(Maybe he’s one of them.)

She twirls her hair at Holly. The pair hate each other. His half sister is rigid and stiff. She doesn’t have time for romance. Never mind it coming from a angel. 

That’s the thing with his siblings. They get anything they want on a silver platter and when they have it they turn their nose up and look for something better. They had his father’s adoration but they only had eyes for the son of a criminal. They had a legend for a grandfather, but they wanted their own legacies. Always wanting more, Breeze would kill for what they had. 

Heather whispers to Hare. A smart, quiet boy. Breeze would have once called him a friend. Now they both walk alone in the corridors. One filled with anger and the other with regret. Breeze doesn’t know which is who. 

Hare helps with her homework. Lured in by sirens music and long eyelashes. Breeze isn’t any better. 

She’s bad at English too. A geography student at heart. She can point at a map and name the place, she knows the world like his mother knows the bible. Inside, out. 

He can’t help her. 

She stays by Leon’s side, clutching his arm with sharp nails. Possessive and victorious with her prize.

He’s something else, Leon. Something more than the rest of this crummy school. A maverick? A saint? A monster? 

Breeze... can’t explain it. 

He can’t blame Heather. She wants to be great too. She will throw her lots in with the sharks, and maybe, just maybe they will notice a colourful fish like her. 

She doesn’t talk to Breeze. She looks at him as though he is a particularly hard puzzle to solve. Some of the pieces are missing. Like parts of his soul. He doesn’t speak to her either.

Childhood seems a long time ago now. Breeze is no longer the clingy boy who shed tears for approval and played family in the playground. 

She looks at him with wrinkles in her brow. He looks the other way. 

5  
He’s scared of the dark. 

Old habits die hard. Like his mother’s weeping and his illegal fighting. 

He would cry in the dark as a child. For approval he could have found only within himself. For a father who was too scared of death to show his affection. 

They both fucked up. His mother, his father. And now himself. He was tearing his skin apart. Knifes in smoky rooms and sweaty chanting in a boxing ring. 

He’s still scared of the dark. Stupid, when he could be scared of blind men with sharp teeth, or a mafioso with a god complex. 

The night isn’t safe. There’s only silence and loud thoughts and monsters under the bed. Breeze doesn’t dare get out of his sheets at night. He stays sweat covered and plastered to the mattress. Not daring to move nor raise his eyes above the covers. 

He wants his mother. Not the one with dark spirals below her eyes and little more noise than a mouse. Not the one who screamed at her husband as if he was the one to blame for everything then cry into a glass of wine. Not the one who broke his heart every second of every day he saw her sad. 

He wanted his mother with the soft smile and the straight back. His mother with the generous heart and biggest pride for him, larger than mountains. 

He searches blindly for his mother in the dark. All he finds are cigarettes and cracked photo frames. 

6  
Spring is the most beautiful season. 

It’s not his favourite by any means. Much preferring summer with its lazy heat waves and crystal oceans. But it’s nice, tranquil. 

Crow would sometimes take him out to the local wood at spring. No words would be shared between them and they would watch the bluebells bloom in the forest, kick mushrooms in the moss, pick newly emerged posies of snowdrops for his mum.

The funeral was held in early spring. The church was bright and airy. In cruel irony, there was a bouquet of snowdrops next to the casket. Breeze had no idea who was behind that specific creative direction. 

Not many people attended, crow was not a popular man. He kept to himself and his work. Grumpy and reclusive- as a result of this not many people truly knew him. 

Nevertheless a few strangers were there. His grandmother- who never much talked to him- was clutching a frilly handkerchief in bony hands, head held high and stubborn- much like her sons’. (Much like his own)

His half- siblings were there too. Mostly out of respect. None of them had ever really been close to their father. Only finding out about their biological parentage early last year. Breeze envied them for that. 

Holly stood in all black, her dark hair looking even more like Crow’s now that he’s gone. She was gazing straight at the coffin, eyes solemn and lips pursed. Her father, Bran sat beside her, a large hand resting comfortingly on her shoulder- his eyes were large and mournful, concerned for his daughter. 

Breeze understood in a way why his siblings had completely rejected Crow. He couldn’t imagine his father ever blatantly comforting anyone in his life. He had his moments, but Bran Claw-the murderer’s son was golden where Crow was silver.

Jay’s features seemed even sharper than usual. No emotion was outwardly expressed on his impassive face, but Breeze could see the clenching of his fists in his suit pockets. They had a rocky relationship, he and Jay. Too similar but too different to see eye to eye. Crow would have liked him, Breeze could tell. The two had the same sharp humour, the same smart tongue. Breeze could never keep up with what his father was saying. Fiery anger in place of the cool head his father would keep during arguments. Jay had that too.

Leon was the only one showing any visible emotion. He had tried being on good terms with Crow- much unlike his two harsher siblings. His eyes were red rimmed and his mother, Squirrel- a legend’s daughter- was clutching his hand. Rubbing soothing circles into his wrist. 

Breeze looked away, uncomfortable. He sat on the other bench at the front of the church. His mother to the right of him, weeping messily into her palms. Breeze didn’t cry. 

As the priest (he didn’t know his name) droned on and on. Breeze could feel the interest draining from his mind like beads of water. He stared at the faceless saint on the stained glass window. The light shining through bathed him in reds and blues. 

He didn’t want to be here.

Everyone soon stood to make their way to the grave for the lowering of crows casket. Breeze stands up, glad to finally stretch his legs and loiters at the back of the crowd. Bran Claw nods at him respectfully-his eyes are still big and sad- Breeze ignores him and turns back to look at the stained window. He doesn’t need any sympathy. 

Of course things would go badly. Breeze prefers summer. 

His mother is screaming at someone- shrieking, howling really. He really doesn’t want her to have another breakdown. Not here not now. They are scary and upsetting at the best of times and at the worst- Breeze has no choice but to lock himself in his room, back to the door and listen. 

He pushes roughly through the crowd, smacking Jay in the face with his elbow and tripping over his own feet. 

There’s a woman standing in the final pew. Her face is quiet. Pale and lifeless almost. Nevertheless she holds herself up bravely in the face of his mother’s fury. 

“How dare you show your face here. After- after all you’ve done-“ Night warbles. Her lips are thin and trembling. Breeze stares transfixed. 

Not now. Not here. Crow doesn’t deserve this. 

Breeze has never felt more mortified.

He can feel his stupid half siblings and their parents gazes on his back. He knows they want to intervene but are too kind to let anyone but himself speak to his mother. 

He almost wishes they would. He doesn’t want to do this anymore. 

So he begs his mother to stop. Takes her arm and drags her away. As she screeches and curses at the woman who crow loved. Everyone is staring, eyes filled with pity and disgust. 

Breeze looks at the floor, quietly. 

“She’s sick,” he mumbles. “She’s just sick.”

Nobody listens. Summer is better anyway. 

He never gets to watch the burial. 

7  
Graveyards are depressing.

Graveyards are fucking depressing. Grey upon grey upon grey. The cheap plastic flowers do nothing to improve the place. Nor do the bold autumn trees. The leaves look like blood. 

He doesn’t visit on a Thursday. He knows this is the day Leah comes. She sits by the gravestone mumbling words in a soft voice and smiles at him. She brings pretty flowers for his father, not fake and gaudy. Sometimes there are bright daffodils, sometimes soft peony. More often than not he finds tiny snowdrops. Droopy and quiet- much like Leah. (Was this why his father would take him to the woods? To stare at flowers and think of a woman he couldn’t love?) 

She really knew Crow. Knew him in a way he didn’t. She knew about the snowdrops. 

Did his own mother know about them?

Breeze stands there, his hair unkempt and greasy. He’s not good at this kind of stuff. 

“Why?” He asks a man in the ground, who loved snowdrops and soft things, but was too scared to show it. 

He gets no response. 

8  
He’s thinking of running away. 

What has he got to loose? Shaking in the dark? Manic laughter in a bloody pit? 

He’s a coward. 

He can’t deal with anything anymore. His mother wonders the house with empty eyes. A ghost. She’s sick. 

He still fights. Tyler claw is just as vicious as always. 

(“Heard about your old man,” he twirls a cigar between his gold, ringed fingers. 

Breeze tenses but doesn’t say anything. Speaking out against Tyler would lead to nothing but a broken neck and sad body-in-a-gutter scenario. He feels Ivy tensing at his side, looking at him with obvious anticipation. She knows the side of Breeze that everyone sees. She knows the Breeze that won’t take shit from anyone, gang leader or not. 

He wont respond. 

“Father’s always let you down.” The man hisses, his burning eyes somewhere further than the dark room they’re sat in. “He visibly composes himself, resting a tilted head on clenched fists. “Then again...” he hums introspectively. “So do sons.”

Breeze for the first time meets his gaze, eye to eye. Tyler blinks back at him, lazy and unconcerned. 

He’s surprised to find himself for the first time agreeing with Tyler “Tiger” Claw.)

When’s he’s on the ground in the ring later- suffering from a broken nose and cracked ribs, he goes back to cursing the man with no one to love.

He wants to run- away from the crowd of animals and laughter of clowns. 

He can’t move.

9  
He’s never been a good liar.

He’s the same Breeze. The same guy with the foul temper, sociopathic tendencies and problematic views. 

Yes- the same Breeze that strokes every cat he finds on the street. The same one that loves the taste of his mother’s curry and the smell of gasoline. He’s the same. 

(He cries in the nearby woods when the snowdrops bloom. He deliberately stands still in the ring when he wants to feel something more than apathy. He doesn’t talk to his mum so much as glance at her.) 

Of course, no one could ever leave him alone. Let him be. 

Five weeks after the funeral and complete disaster that was his mother, he gets into a fight that he can’t win. 

It’s over nothing really, some cruel group of teens- the same as him- recognise him from the fighting ring. Maybe it was something he said or someone he fought, but one things guaranteed, they’re pissed. 

Blood trickles steadily down his nose and he wheezes in pain from where the leader of the group has a dirty sneaker pressed on his windpipe. Maybe he’ll die here if he’s lucky. Maybe he won’t have to go home to a dark house and mindless noise. Maybe he’ll have run away in some form.

He doesn’t die. 

It’s worse.

His half brothers arrive, Leon with his golden hair and righteous anger. (But that couldn’t be right, they were only brothers in blood and even that wasn’t enough. They had the genetics of a soft, cowardly woman who carried flowers for a dead man, and he had the blood of an outcast. They could never be siblings.)

Somehow, the school boxing champion scares off the five thugs- some even larger than him and wielding rusty knives. Breeze gazes at him with sluggish interest. The other teen seems to be glowing, his knuckles bruised and crimson dripping down his brow. Still, Leon wins, there’s something within him... something different. 

When they scamper off with broken fingers and black eyes, Jay rushes over to him and swiftly checks for injuries. 

“Does it hurt when I touch here?” He drawls, monotone voice sounding slightly less apathetic than usual. 

Breeze laughs bitterly. “Course’ it does... tha’s why you touch’dd it.” He coughs and spits out the thick wad of blood that’s gathered in his mouth. 

Jay doesn’t say anything but lightens his touch. A man of actions rather than words. 

Finally he’s satisfied, wipes Breeze’s darkening blood on his jeans and stands. He looks down at the other with sightless, glassy eyes that seem to pierce into his very soul.

Breeze has no choice but to blink dazedly back at him. 

“I’ve called an ambulance,” Leon mumbles. He looks awkward and uncomfortable which is strange. Leon’s the most oblivious person Breeze has ever encountered. 

Jay nods at him and there’s a beat where they seem to silently communicate something between themselves. Breeze is left out of the loop.

They have no obligation to include him. They hate him. (It still hurts.)

Leon walks out onto the street to wait for the medics.

It’s just him and Jay. 

The other gazes at him and curls his lip, in a way so reminiscent of his father. Breeze feels cornered, like an animal. Wounded and lying in a puddle of blood. 

The ghost of his father whispers in his ear.

“You can’t keep doing this.” Jay speaks. His voice is not sympathetic, not kind, but it’s soft. Soft and imperative. Of Breeze were anybody else he’d think he was concerned. 

“You can ask for help you know.”

Breeze for a moment doesn’t respond. Then familiar, welcoming anger quickly fills his body. “I don’t need anyone’s help!” He lies through his bloody teeth. 

He worries that jay can hear in his voice the unhealthy coping mechanisms, deeply rooted in violence and money. His mother who he seldom speaks to and the empty house filled with ghosts. 

He’s alone. He’s always alone. He likes it that way. (He doesn’t.)

Jay looks at him. Really looks. He seems... disappointed but unsurprised. “You’ll loose everyone if you keep acting like this.” 

With that he turns away. 

The ambulance arrives and he’s bundled up in blankets and asked constantly about his pain. 

He thinks about how Jay and Leon stood on the curb and watched, always watching him. 

He doesn’t need their help. 

He’s never been a good liar. Jay knows this. Some part of him hates his brother for not pushing that day. Not helping him anyways.

He’s better off without them.

10

He doesn’t miss him. 

(This isn’t true.)


End file.
